Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Is There Room For More Gaming Consoles? - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 177

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Tim and Jared discuss what Google entering the console market might mean for the industry. (Released first to http://www.Patreon.com/KindaFunnyGames Supporters on 06.29.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 177 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by Jared Petty. Dokey, dokey, my friends. One half of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller, is out in Montreal doing what he does best, which is eating a lot of food and hanging out with Jen. Oh, champ, come back to America. He's got to come. He'll be back. Even as we speak, he's in a meetup.

Right now, literally right now. He's doing a meet and greet in Montreal. Yeah, of course. Yeah, he was like trapped in his car and able to escape. that's hard I hate traffic ladies and gentlemen this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games we get together and talk

about video games all the things that we love about them you can get the show on YouTube you can watch it live by supporting us on patreon.com slash kind of funny games you can get the show early on Fridays or you can wait and get it for free on Mondays at 9am on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games the reason you can get this show free if you choose to do that is because

of the support of amazing people on Patreon Patreon producers like Tom Bach and Eric Heights. Two men that I had an awesome time hanging out with at kind of funny prom. Kevin's clapping. I was very excited to beat Tom Bach face-in face. Tom Bach is the fucking man.

Eric is the fucking homie. His suit was looking so good. What suit did Eric? Eric had just a dope-ass jacket and then a button up all overprint, very Tim Getty's approved, Nicktoons thing. Oh, I saw him.

A bunch of different Nick tunes going on. Oh, that's that same Eric. No kidding. Oh, okay, yeah. Man, that prom, that was something else. I haven't really been around for the post-prom happiness. But Lord in heaven, I had just about the best time at prom I had if you had doing anything.

I was what you got from me, Big Cup. I was going to say shoutouts to Anna Box, Nailing the Madonna. Shout to Tom Box's wife. What was Anna Boxing? She was dressed as Madonna. She was dressed as Madonna. I didn't, I don't think I ran into it. And it was fantastic.

That's spectacular. You know, I want to get just right into it. All right. Just right into it. You were playing some video games. I don't know a couple of these. Uh-oh. What the fuck is Tales of the Tiny Planet?

Tales of the Tiny Planet was a surprising delight. So every now and then, Tim, I have this fun little habit where I'll open up a marketplace on one of my consoles or on my PC. And I'll just start looking around at new releases and looking for stuff I've never heard of. So I did the Sun PlayStation 4 just this week. I just started going through and go down a little bit and like, okay, nothing this week, back a little bit. And I come across this happy little smiling planet, Tales of the Tiny Planet. And I'm like, well, that's interesting. And I broke my own rule of purchasing.

I read no reviews. I look nothing up. just said, I'm going to impulsively buy and try this little indie game. And I did, and it's really fun. Tales of the Tiny Planet is marvelously simple. I believe it's a mobile port, although I don't know that for sure because I still haven't looked this up, really. But Tales of the Tiny Planet is operated entirely with one button.

That's how you play the game. So I'm sitting there on my PS4 and absolutely everything in the game is controlled by one button. It's very simple. You have a cute little planet with a happy smiley face. He's got to get to a goal somewhere on the level. There's gravity in this world, so everything kind of pulls him down. He rolls, sort of like loco-roco style.

He's just rolling, right? There are certain parts of the stage that are movable. It was a mobile game. It was a mobile game. Okay, so there's certain parts of the stage. It was great on PlayStation. It works really well there. Certain parts of the stage that are movable.

By pressing the button and holding it, I can move those parts of the stage. And it's kind of like sensitive, so I can move it partway and let go, it drops back. But when I press that button, it moves every part of the stage that's mobile. at the same time. What that means is that simple things like opening and closing doors, raising elevators, those are easy. But when I have to raise the elevator while making sure the spinner doesn't lock, while making sure the spikes don't flip around,

while making sure I still have the bridge to cross all it. And I'm using that one button, playing what I'm doing right now while looking ahead, on a timer, trying to three-star it. If I wait too long, my little planet just explodes and a cry of agony, and then I move on to the next stage. That's it. It's simple. It's cute.

The little planet just goes every now and then. It is not revolutionary, but it is a very fun video game. How much is it? I think I paid like eight bucks for it. Oh, wow. Yeah, somewhere around that area. But I think that honestly, I'm shocked when I have to pay anything less than eight bucks for a video game. Looking at what it costs to produce independent games, I can't believe anybody sells anything for less than 15.

because that may sound horrific when we consider what goes into a $60 game. If you think that $15 means you should get a quarter of a $60 game, then you're not supporting a realistic economic market for independent game development because the fact of the matter is they sell so few copies relative to most other people with the exception of breakouts like Undertale or Stardy Valley that they have to charge that much money just to eat or to pay back what they spend on the game. We've got to be able to be willing to pay more for independent games if we want to continue to have a variety of them exist,

unless we're comfortable with the idea that people just lose everything making these, which is what's happening to some folks. So I try to pay a little more. And again, some of that, I'm like, I'm so noble. No, I'm also allowed the economic freedom to pay a little more because certain game purchases

are tax deductible for me because why do you for a living and things like that. I get codes sometimes. I'm not trying to be like, I'm sorry, but I do think it's important to financially support independent developers. So Tales of the Tiny Planet, gets the Jared thumbs up.

It does. It's good. I like it. It's not like, you're not going to be like, this is the slick as cool. But it is totally a fun little game. And I like it on my PS4 and go home play it some more. It also has a little co-op mode. You can play with somebody else and both sit there and control parts of the level. So we got some fighting games you want to talk about. Yeah. We got Blaze Blue Cross-tag battle. Indeed, Blaz-Bless Blue games are really good consistently. You ever play any of them? I played Guilty Gear a lot back in the day. When Blaze Blue came out, for whatever reason, I think. I think maybe I didn't have the right, the console that it came out on, because it was an arcade game originally, right? Yeah, yeah, that's where I first played it was arcane. Was it the other way? Like, was this one of the cases where it was console first and then went to arcade? All I can tell you is that I started playing it in the arcade when I lived in Japan. Prior to that, I don't have a deep history.

I never played it. I understand, I am not a fighting game, hardcore guy. I'm a video game player that plays a lot of fighting games, but I'm not good at them, and I'm not part of that community, and I don't know a lot about them. That's my answer. So I played Blais Blue originally on arcade. There have been many, many versions since. I've played several of those.

Arc SystemWorks does a great job with fighting games. This is kind of Baby's first fighting game. Okay. Have you played this at all? I haven't played it at all. I want to give a shout out to Arc SystemWorks because their games are beautiful and they still do the pixel-based, awesome animations and all of that. You know, and that's what I was so drawn to with Guilty Gear.

I loved the soundtrack and I loved the look of the games in a time when, you know, Street Fighter 3. is probably my favorite looking street fighter game. It's a really good looking game. And, you know, once we get to four and stuff, then five, like, yeah, sure, they're beautiful. But it's just, like, it doesn't have that same kind of, like, video game aesthetic to it.

I agree with you. Yeah, and the thing about this that you want to know is that we're not talking about retro here. These games don't look old. Yeah. They look beautiful. Yeah. Just beautiful.

They're art. Super fluid. Super great. And what I love about, so this game specifically is it's a crossover game. It's not just crossover between two different things. It's a bunch of. different. Yeah, persona.

The persona fighting game characters are in there? There's Ruby characters. Yeah. Like all four of the Ruby girls. Two of them start off in the game. I think it's Ruby and Weiss. And then Blake and Yang are a free DLC that you can get. And I'm just like, it's, to me, being so close to Rooster Teeth and so close to the Ruby

project. Yeah. I can't believe that they're in an actual fighting game. Yeah. A top tier fighting game. And it's really cool to see. Yeah. And Crespeg Battle, when I called a baby's first fighting game, I didn't mean for that to be

derivative, by the way. or not derivative, pardon me. I didn't mean for that to be pejorative. I need to learn how to use words. The fact of the matter is that that crosshag is designed to be accessible without sacrificing depth. And so it's a fighting game that you can learn the fundamentals of other fighting games through playing.

It's a good teaching tool. But it's also a- Explain that a little more. Like, what are you talking about? Less complex controls. That's really what it comes down to. You can still learn about the defensive and offensive principles, about space. about how to how to try to anticipate what an opponent's doing about how to pull off combos

you can learn that but can you learn in an environment where the complexity of control and understanding the nuance of your character is less obtuse fighting games are mostly now made with the exception of injustice and mortal combat and even those to agree made for fighting game fans there's an established market of people that have been playing these games for a long time know them well um this game is designed with all the things those players appreciate and understand about those games intact to some degree, but also a simplified scheme for control and comprehending how to win. Just two characters to switch out. Just a limited number of moves per character. You can get your head around it. It's sort of like when we played

Street Fighter 2 way back in the day, and you instantly kind of understood what you were trying to do, even if you sucked. Because the characters kind of fall, I mean, there's the basic moves, but then even when you add the specials, the characters all kind of fall into buckets of of, you know, you're either have the quarter-sicle punches or you have the charges. Yeah. And you play these guys and you're like, you can just look at this game and pick a character because you think they look cool.

Which is, yeah. Do you remember the first time you played Street Fighter or two? Chunlee was my girl. Always. So you saw, why did you pick Chunley first? I tend to play as girls in games. I don't know. I played as Peach and Mario too and it just stuck from there. Also, the color blue, big fan of it. Big fan. So Chunley, I was just like, that's my girl.

That's fantastic. Well, you popped in there and got And you're like and then you kept playing her because she was fun this game kind of has that feel you're like that's still bad and I'm very bad with the charge characters for some reason I'm just not good at that like the holding back and then so like I can never play as gile okay you just can't do it at all see gile was my original I gradually moved over to Chunley but guy was my original street fighter two made fighting games both smooth and accessible and we all kind of entered on the ground floor then people got really good at fighting games and it became impossible to play with friends that were good at them this is a game that you and your friends can come in on the ground floor together on and spend many hours just figuring it out together and have fun you're not going to feel like you're missing the game that reminds me of a back in the day playing marvel versus capcom two uh with my friends which that's a deep ass game but you even when you're losing you still feel like you're having fun and doing something yes well that is the most unbalanced glorious mess i MVC two is is art it is what i wish every video game were just like

it on switch do you think that'll ever happen i know there's so many licensees issues. Like they did the re-release on XPLA and PSN on last gen and they took it down. Do you think Disney cares enough to do it? I mean, that's the problem is they own the Marvel characters now, I assume. I don't have depth, in-depth knowledge of this, but I'm not sure

that Disney really cares enough to let the eye of Soron focus on that long enough. You know, when you have so much money at stake, it seems like it would be easier to let small projects happen, but in some ways it's harder because people care more about showing a $50 million profit than a $5 million profit on their department.

So stuff like this gets left behind. I don't know it would be an ideal Switch game. I mean, I just got three-farter 30th on Switch and I cannot get enough of it. I think that MVC 2, especially with good online, perfect for Switch. So great. Yeah, it really would. I just, I'm going to come to working. Who are your, what's your team?

My team, again, I'm not good, but I just had a lot of fun. It was both Wolverines and Spider-Man. Nice. I liked getting in there just with the quick fucking punches. I loved the way Spider-Man looks when he was playing. It seems beautiful. It is beautiful. And it introduced me to so many obscure Capcom and Marvel characters.

Like that's where I learned about Thanos. That's where I learned about whoever the fucking Ruby, not Ruby Rose, Little Red Riding Hood, whatever she was. Oh, I forget it on the Capcom. Yeah, my brain. She was from Darkstalkers. Yes, exactly. I didn't know about Darkstalkers. And I became interested because I'm like, who the fucks is Felicia Katchang?

I love Darkstalkers now. That's a big. Are you, did you play Finding Games back in the day? I enjoy, I'm kind of like what you're saying. You're way more into it than me. I enjoy fighting games a lot. I, uh, I pop into for as bad of a port as it is it, as it is the street fighter two ultra or whatever it is that they put out on switch.

Oh, I have that. It's one of the games I pop back into and just play through the arcade mode when I'm just laying in bed and I have an extra 30 minutes. Do you ever play that with a friend? Uh, have you ever done that mode? Angie and I do it sometimes. So there's a neat mode that's unique to that game where you, there's three fighters on screen.

You, a teammate, and the end. Really? The two of you are ganging up on the third. Yeah, you work side by side Crazy you share a life bar so and she so it's like your tea you're like ganging up on bison or something But every time he hits one of you or throws one of you you both take damage Interesting it's a lot of fun yeah that sounds cool yeah allows Angie and I to play a fighting game co-op with a with Blasbleu Cross tag battle how does the gameplay compared to the traditional Blasblu games? It's very pretty and fluid the way the traditional ones are, but it is simplified. You have a, you have a more limited degree of options, at least, and again, I understand that I'm not coming at this from the

top tier fighting game expert perspective. But what I see is simplified controls, simplified execution of more complex ideas, but, but enough going on that I'm thoroughly entertained. It's not quite as nuanced, right? Mostly persona characters. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I really love the arena games, and so I've leaned really heavily into the persona stuff. That's yeah, that's- You played with the Ruby characters at all? A little. And again, that's just, they're not my characters actually.

Yeah. I like the idea that I can hop in from like Arena Ultamax and feel like I'm right in there. Yeah. And that there's a certain feel that's great. It's not perfect, by the way. It's just a really good game. Yeah. And I want to give it some-

Now I'm, I wasn't gonna play it, but you're getting excited about this. It's real good. Yeah. And the switching fighters is fun because it's literally a one-button switch. Yeah. It's just pop. Somebody's in. Pop, somebody's in.

Or pop, somebody runs in and delivers a smack to the back of the head and out. Is it three on three or two on two? Two on two. Two on two. Keep it simple. Again, that's it. It's like all the stuff you would learn for a more complex fighting game. But I think it's a really good intro for that. That's awesome.

I gotta play his wife, man. The homie. Hold on. Kevin just sent me something and I need to see what it is. Oh, no. What have you received here? Oh, Jesus. What is this?

Kevin, can you somehow show the people? What is he done? Oh, is it Asky porn? Yeah, I guess. Okay, yeah, you don't know. You gotta show me. What the fuck is this? I don't know.

I stumbled upon it. No, don't. I stumbled upon it. No, no. Okay, so this is probably created procedurally just by filtering video through. I've seen this done on old PCs a lot. I'm trying to slack it. I'm trying to slack into the computer so you can show the kids.

Do you have Blasbleau on your switch right now? I do. Okay. When we're done with this, I might want to hop on that for a second. But there's another fighting game that you got to play that people that were watching games daily today when we're recording this, got to see me show Jared this game for the first time. Pocket Rumble. Yes. And how I miss Pocket Rumble, I do not know, but thank you Tim Gettys for the introduction.

That's what I do. Because Pocket Rumble, despite the fact, again, that it's okay. Yeah, show the people. Oh, no, man. It's not that graphic. You see the shit, Cool, Greg? It's just someone gently slapping their bottom. Oh, man.

It's just called jiggle. Thank you. All right. Pocket rumble. Way too much Usenet going on here right now. All right. Take that down. I'm not going to be able to think about it.

Thank you very much. I've lost my complete train of throw. Thank you. Pocket rumble. Yeah. I like a lot of old games. I think sometimes that gets over-emphasized on here. It's like not like a.

don't play or love new games. Pocket Rumble is a new game that looks like a very specific old game. S&K versus Capcom match of the millennium for the Neo Geo Pocket. The ill-fated, did you ever have a Neo Geo pocket? I never did. Okay, do you remember them? I do remember them. So for a little while, the Neo Geo Pocket was kind of the premier color handheld you could

have for a very brief period of time. It was named after the Neo Geo, this famous like $700 home console that had arcade hard were in it. Remember the Wonder Swan? I do remember the Wonder Swan. Never released in America. Yeah, it was a Digimon game on that that I really wanted. Oh, have you ever played it? Never played it. So, Wonder Swan's like a buck in Japan. Really? Yeah, like you can just go buy a Wonder Swan for like a dollar and take it home. Swan crystals are much more expensive because they don't have the ghosting on the screen. That's what you want. That's a good one. I love you so much, Jared. Oh, yeah, I love Wonder Swan. It's great. It had great version of Final Fantasy on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot of great stuff on Wonder

Swan. So Neo Geopocket. Yeah, NeoGeopocket. So anyway, Neo Geo Pocket. So anyway, Neo Geo pocket color without the historical essay was this really great color handheld that unlike Neo Geo was not about super cutting edge hardware. It presented a eight bitesque experience with really pretty colors, a nice screen for the time, this great eight directional clicky thumbstick. I don't know how to describe that thing, except that it felt like a perfect cross between an analog stick and a D pad. And nobody else has ever done it anywhere else that I've seen. One of the stand out things on that system with several very good fighting games because S&K, big into fighting games. That was kind of their bread and butter. And the best of those was their S&K Capcom matchup

overlap super game. That is a two button fighter, eight directional movement, two control buttons, effectively punch and kick or light and heavy. But what you get from that in terms of options and faithfulness execution is a game that somehow has street fighter characters that feel like Street Fighter characters, even though they're cute and little and easy to control. And S&K characters that feel like they're S&K characters and way more movesets and balance and strategy. Then you'd imagine with two buttons. They need to imagine with two buttons.

Because we're talking, it's a GBA setup. Yeah, without shoulder buttons. Yeah. I mean, it is just a two-face button deal. And it's dope. It's great. It's beautiful. The art's still beautiful.

This game evokes the look and feel of the, of that game like I never imagined possible. And it does it on Switch and it does it on apparently other platforms that I hadn't played yet. What else is it available on, Tim? Do you know? I will introduce me to it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to throw you a curb ball there. Throw that curve ball.

Throw that curve ball. So why play it? One, it's even more accessible than cross-tack battle. Although it's got your standard like deep fighting game tutorials are totally in there. It looks old, but it plays sublime. limely. There's a ton of variety in the fighters and the abilities that they have. Everybody feels really distinct. I've gotten hooked already on June, who's this ghost character. There's a lot of flavor. Like her grab is, she's like a floaty ghost and she'll literally just possess someone,

like go into their body, pick them up and throw them against the ground from inside. That's awesome. That's her throw. Like it's so rad. And she'll like summon things. There's a really good power up system where you can lay traps for people. It's all about area control. And so, she'll clone herself and you can leave a trap on the battlefield for some yeah but you have like active control of it and that's it's it's oh sims switch exclusive it looks like oh switch exclusive that's yeah well this game is dope yeah just fantastic how much is it uh i think i paid 10 for it i believe uh and it's worth every penny if not more i am honestly think it's underpriced uh what about you have you played it at all yet i i played it it i want to say gdc it was either gdc or some packs a while

ago. But yeah, I mean, I'm immediately looking at it. I'm like, this is so up my alley. I love this type of stuff. And that's what I'm saying about finding games that I'm not, I'm not good at them. I'm not even really that deep into them at all. But a two button, pretty looking, aesthetically pleasing fighting games, sign me the fuck up. Great tutorials, really deep, lots of special abilities, neat music, beautiful graphics. And the graphics are thoughtful. They're not just like, we're going to make retro style. The palette choices are really smart. Like, everything pops and it pop's great, but they're also somehow evocative with the NeoGeo Pocket Color palette.

I don't know how they did that. Yeah. Well, it kind of has that filter over it that makes it all look very, like, I don't even know what the word is, but like it looks like there's like a checkerboard filter almost in between each pixel. And yeah, it works. This is the game when you saw Karen taking the game to the party.

What? Like a window screen thing? Not quite. I don't. Pull up the trailer. Yeah, it's really in the game. Tim, I really want to think. So while he's pulling that up, you know when you saw Karen in the original Switch reveal going to the party and setting it up on the kickstand and people all playing with her joycons?

This is the game for that. Totally. Because you can play it with it. Yeah, there we go. But yeah, just kind of that like old school CRT filter. Isn't it the same thing that you get from like a VR? Oh, I don't think it's like a, I don't think it's like an eagle filter exactly. I can't quite figure out how they did this.

The lines, yeah. Yeah, it looks really, really good. And I haven't played online yet, but I'm assuming since it's stupid. It looks so tight. And when you play it on handheld mode, that's like they're showing there. So it looks really cool blown up. But when it's small, it's perfect. You can see it great.

So this is the game to set up on your kickstand, sit next to a friend and play. Like this is like, hey, I got the ghost character you're talking about. 15 minutes at my lunch break. I'm going to play this. Yeah, that's the training room there. I love that one looks like Ash Ketcham just fucking. Oh, the guy with red gloves? Yeah.

He's like, Tintu. He's like Ryu. He's like Ryu. He's totally a real clone. That's Naomi right there, who I can't figure out who she's based on yet, but her moves set, she's really quick. Like very, very agility based. That's awesome, man. Yeah.

I want to play. Thanks for this. It's a great game. And then you played another game today that we talked about on kind of funny games. The game that came out, I was making fun of the name, and you're like, you know what? I'm going to play it. Jared, what do you think about disease hidden object? A real game on the Nintendo Switch.

Disease hidden object. All right. So video games with dumb names can be great. Let's start there. There are video games with terrible names that are superb. Disease hidden object is not among those games. It does have a terrible name. No.

Imagine if Where's Waldo were a video game, which has happened. There was an NES Worz Waldo game. But worse, much, much worse. You have a timer. You have a dark room on your small switch screen. You have a list of objects you're supposed to find, which are roughly sketched on a pad and you have a pointer. Your job is to find those objects and click on them.

It's all the worst parts of a point-and-click adventure game where you're pixel hunting without any of the good parts of a point-and-click adventure game where you've got great humor and interesting, compelling storytelling. And it is an atrocity. I mean, they should, honestly, it is like, it's really, bad. I should not have said that. But it is, it is awful. It is bad. It is very, very bad. You showed me it. You came up to me. You were like, Tim, look what you made me do. And you didn't

make me. I did jump in and volunteer. It looked fucking horrible. That is $8. One screen. You didn't even get to move around. Just one screen. And it is just like finding these objects. Yeah. That are, I guess they're diseased. I don't know, there was a cat blocking some scissors at one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He wasn't even moving. It was just like, why? Why? I tried. I've got the scissors. And then there was some headphones. I wanted to like it. Narrative sense. Yeah, I wanted to like it.

I wanted it to get better. I could not bring myself to slog past the first screen. There was one object. I was having trouble finding. I'm literally like doing this. I don't care anymore. So, unfortunately, disease hidden object, not a winner. Gets Jared's two thumbs down.

Yeah. How you doing, cool, Greg? Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I love him so much.

It looked like you had something. say. You leaned in, but no, it's all good. I don't have too much to talk about because I can't. There's three different Switch games that I am playing that I am not allowed to talk about. I'm enjoying all of them quite a bit.

That's all I can say. So you're a mysterious games. There will be more on Gamescast next week for some games. But yeah, I'm having a good time with all of them. What I have played quite a bit of is Crash Bandicoot Insane Trilogy on Nintendo Switch. Obviously

I'm a huge fan of the game, of the franchise I actually really appreciate this version of the game because it doesn't have the fur K, it doesn't have the lighting effects and the fancy stuff that the PS4 and Xbox and PC versions have. And because of that, Crash kind of looks a bit more plastic and like everything's a little darker and it makes it look more like the original games did. And that was probably my biggest criticism of the remaster is that they made Crash look too furry and like to, the art style seemed to change. Crash, especially Crash Boyd, always had this like real contrasty, like a lot of shadows on everything work to it. And it did seem very plasticy. And the remake made it way more fuzzy overall because I think they're trying to make it feel

more like these are real animals. But I like that the downgrade on the switch actually makes it look more like I want it to. That's fascinating. I think that is just a byproduct of the switch's reduced power in terms of. to just like raw horsepower? There is some weird, weird things with the downgrades that they had to make. Like there's parts where you'll be walking and in the original games that tells of what you needed to dodge would be you're seeing a reflection. Yeah.

And like you would see something off screen shooting at you, but you knew it was happening because you saw it in the reflection. Yeah. There is no reflection. So do you think that's being changed because of the smaller screen or because the switch can't handle it? I think it can't handle it. Okay. That's what I wondered. But I talked to one of the developers

when we were at E3 and I was asking him about some of these the changes. So I was looking for it while I'm playing through the game. And he was telling me that because they had to make concessions like that, they did change things and they added tells exclusively to the switch

so that even though you don't see the reflection, now you see them come on screen for a second and hear different audio cues to let you know, like, oh, there's something you need to dodge. And I was like, oh, hey, cool. At least if you're going to make changes, like make sure that you're changing it

all the way so you're not breaking the game, kind of like Twin Snakes adding the first person mode, really broke the game. Yeah, right. You know, whereas this, it's just changing warning signs to be able to jump and stuff. Think of all the stuff that Twin Snakes broke.

Just breaks my heart. So much. I'm a Twin Snakes fan. Are you? I definitely am. Really? Oh, no,

I'm with a crowd that says that the articulation on the faces ruin the game. Like, MGS 1 works really well when the guy's like, but doesn't always like, like, hello. I'm clearly enunciating this. And suddenly it's creepy. Do you feel, not feeling like? You're right, but there's just something about it

where it's like, I get that MGS 1, the original is always going to be like the timeless classic. But it's like, dude, Twin Snakes is dope. Or sometimes remakes are better. Sometimes remakes are much better. Resident Evil remake is better than Resident Evil. It is definitely better.

Absolutely. But I like the over-the-top like Kung Fu and like Matrixe action scenes and stuff. Well, you definitely got that from that. I just felt that that robbed snake of his like kind of every menace. Like Snake is this guy that kind of gets beats up and he's kind of dumb and he's kind of and and in that he's just like, hello, I am super ninja from the future fighting other super ninja.

And I felt like it took away. You like that. So back to crash. Back to crash. I'm really, I'm having a good time with it. And like I have all the same critiques I always do about the crash games where the difficulty spike in Crash 1 is just, it's frustrating. The hit boxes are just like, they're just horrible. All the hog wild levels are like the, the, They're fun, but then you get to the ones where you're on the, any of the bridge levels are just like, stop. Do you wish that the remake had had less fidelity to the original material that it had altered those things? That they had to change the gameplay? No, no, no, no, I feel like you need to keep the game.

Really? What it was. Yeah, like you can't, it would be a twin snakes type situation where then all of a sudden it's not fun anymore. Like, there's boss fights and twin snakes that just simply are not fun because it's so easy. and all the challenge is gone and so it might as well have just been a cutscene And I feel like with Crash The difficulty is the precision jumps

If you take that away You might as well be watching a YouTube video I'm playing, you know? But yeah And I feel like there's just so much content in this game And like I played through all three crash games So many times. I've only beat Crash 1 once

From and I streamed that on my birthday a couple of years ago I was honestly unaware that anyone had ever beaten Crash 1 Dude Crash 1 is fucking hard. It is so hard to the point that it's just not worth it. No, I didn't think anyone had ever seen the credits to that game. Crash two and three are a lot better

balanced and there's a lot more going on. And again, like I replayed through all three last year and here I am again. Like wanting to play through them again, but on Switch just gives me that extra like, oh cool, I can do this wherever I want to in little short bursts. So you can chip away at this first three years. Yeah, getting

100% in each one. Like it won't be an actual platinum, but who gives a fuck? You can arrive at your bus stop angry from having missed all that platforming. Yes. So is this a recommend, Tim? Yeah, dude, crash on Switch. I think

I could definitely recommend it because for $40, you're getting three games that have a, there's a lot of content there. If you enjoy platformers at all, it's like there's a lot of good there. I'd say more good than bad.

There is a lot of bad. But there's more good than bad overall. Europe's loving it. I think the biggest question is, yeah, the biggest question is is it worth double dipping for? For all the people that bought it last year on on PS4 and I honestly feel like you know the answer to that question in your heart Like you are they're like yes

These are games that I want to have on me forever like me like totally it's worth it for people like me Is it worth it for others? No, probably probably not Yeah, that makes sense Yeah, and then then I've been playing more Mario tennis aces But that's I just finally gave up on story mode entirely Okay, and I was like I'm just not doing this. It's not fun everyone agrees like fuck this so i just been playing tournament mode i haven't been online it's just tournament against uh bots and like man it's just such a fun tennis game so somebody told me after

our last show one of the best friends i don't remember who that we did have one fact wrong when we talked about mario tennis aces last time in that you do have to finish story mode to unlock all the courts that's what they said oh really uh and i don't know that firsthand because i have not bothered with story mode but i am wondering about that do you think they'll patch it so that's the courts are available, recognizing that that might be a mistake? Probably not. That doesn't seem like an Nintendo move. I wonder.

But, yeah, we'll see. That's interesting. I also don't need all the cords. It's tennis. Did you see the thing somebody made a joke on Twitter today that Drake released an updated version of his most recent album? There's effectively, like, somebody's pointing out that, like, Drake is now patching his albums.

And that's, dude, Kanye started that, like, two years ago, I think. And it's just, that's just how music is made now. Now we're just going to patch it's fucking update shit. Walt Whitman rewrote Lisa Grass over and over and over in the course of his life and kept re-releasing like revised versions of his poetry. Yeah. Like so the poems would actually change. But I mean, what's weird about this, not to go on too much of a tangent of this, but like when these albums are just our digital albums, right? And it's on Spotify and then they make changes and change the track list and move songs around.

Then you don't get the old versions anymore unless you already had them downloaded. So it's like it's weird that we are getting to an era where unless you're conscious about collecting digital files. There's a chance you're not going to be able to ever get the original thing you paid for. I wish I could patch stupid things I've said, you know? Yeah. That would be amazing. Good Lord. It's been a whole bunch of those.

Yep. Now it's time for the topic of the show. This one's really, really interesting to me. Someone wrote into Kind of Funny Games Daily yesterday when it was me and Gary. And they're talking about the news of Google trying to enter the console space. I looked a little bit into this. Google is supposedly going to enter the market with the three. pronged approach.

One, a streaming platform, two, new hardware, and three, an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella, whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions. So I wanted to talk to you about, it's 2018. Yep. We got Nintendo doing better than they have in a very long time. Yep. We have a dominant Sony like we've never seen before. We have a Microsoft that is building towards a much better future learning.

from the mistakes of the Xbox one while still being very successful and making a lot of money. Yep. Is there room for a fourth power player? And if so, what would that mean for the three that we have and how can the fourth succeed

being Google? Well, first off, I definitely think there's room for a fourth power player because there already is one. In this community, we don't talk about it as much because we are mostly a console-focused community. But ladies and gentlemen, there's that thirsteen.

It's been there for a long time And that is absolutely The fourth pillar of game sales Seam, Gog, etc That world is Every bit As if not more Lucrative than the console space

Indeed I would say there is a fifth pillar Oh come on calm down These funny little things Which by the way have two separate marketplaces Both of which are succeeding nicely Right now there are already Six major places I can go to play mainstream video games

There's this old argument in consoles that goes all the way back to the Sega dropout around the Dreamcast that you can only support three at once. I think that has long been an inachronistic argument. It's interesting you bring up the mobile specifically and even PCs to an extent because while there is PC exclusive games for sure, I feel that the reason that the big three are the big three are that they have the AAA exclusive titles. And that's kind of what sets them apart from these other platforms. And yes, I guess, like, Super Mario Run would be a AAA title on mobile. But I don't, what's up? Well, I mean, we default to Super Mario Run immediately, but let's, you know, a AAA title in Mobile isn't Super Mario Run.

It's Flappy Bird. Yeah. Or that too. I mean, and I know that sounds silly, and it's not anymore, but, but the amount of money generated versus the cost to develop on something like Flapy Bird or Crossy Road or or any of the hundred other things that have burst through and broken through on mobile, if I invested $1,000 into that and then got back a percentage-wise what that game made, my returns are going to be more significant than many AAA console games.

I think that the storytelling around consoles is better. And you and I are storytellers. I don't think we talk about that very often, but we are enthusiasts. We are people that love a hobby. And we love the games and we love the industry around the games. And we love the narrative that's within the games. and the meta-narrative of how they're made and who makes them.

And that's why we can say names like Miyamoto or Kojima and people get excited because they know the meta-narrative, they know the world. Consuls do that better than anybody. Absolutely. But that's not all it takes to be a vital and significant financial force in the marketplace of gaming.

And mobile and PC approved for a long time that there are other factors like accessibility, Blue Ocean Strategy, which means reaching out to places where people aren't already playing games and finding new customers, the things that you can do on PC easily that you can't necessarily do as easily on a console, that's finally changing as consoles effectively come PCs.

All those things also weigh into the equation. The story's not as much fun, but the fact is money's being made hand over fist in those arenas. So if Google were to come in with a console, where does it fit then? Like if you're adding to argument that there is mobile, and PC and then there's the consoles.

My gut tells me that Google is trying to get in more in the conversation that we have about Nintendo Xbox, Sony. Really more with Sony and Xbox than it is the mobile and PC side. I think, and I don't have, I don't have any clear picture what this looks like. But I think we're talking about changing thought from hardware to platform.

We've talked about this in abstract. abstract ways before. But Google controls a good portion of what goes on in our lives every day. When we come to work in the morning, what do we use to look up our news articles to work on games daily? Yeah, Google, our emails, our calendars. What do we write those articles in and play on the show in? Google docs.

We do our calendars in Google. Google is intrinsically connected to every part of our lives. My phone runs on Google software. I think what Google can do is they can say, we will present you with an affordable hardware device that all apps of a certain classification and all games of a certain classification will run on. Or if you already own a PC or a Mac or a Linux-based PC,

you can just pop this on there and those that work too as long as it's up to certain specs. Or if you have a Google Android phone equipped with this hardware minimum, then these tiered apps will also function. on there, and we can effectively play games across every place Google touches, which means the whole wide world. That's where I'm going to guess Google's going to go with this.

Because even their control of the internet, you know, with Google fiber and with their understanding of like the growth strategies there, we always talk about the cloud future that we are a digital future that we're going towards. And a lot of the problems that come up with that are where places that don't have internet that's good enough to be able to handle all that. Google can solve those problems. They can. And that's always been the problem.

I forget places that don't already have it. You know, there's that last Blockbuster shirt. I wear sometimes from the little town in Alaska that doesn't have good download service. The Blockbuster is still open there. There are still places like that in the world. But more importantly, the big wildcard in this whole Netflix of gaming future, everybody talks about, has been hardware connectivity. Backbone, 5G, fiber. Google can solve that.

What they can do that nobody else can is provide streaming games that aren't just hundreds of megabytes, but that are terabytes eventually, which is where gaming is going. And when we get there, they're going to be a better position that anybody in the face of the planet Earth to deliver it. So let's talk about timing. We know where we're heading towards the end of this console generation. We don't know if that's going to be a year, two years, three years, but we know that it's coming. We know that a PS5 and an Xbox 112 are being developed and are going to hit at some point.

I think that we can say best estimations at this point. 20-21? What, for Google, you think? No, no, no, for the console. Or for Xbox. Late 2020 or late 2021. I'm not sure which. Somewhere around there.

What do you think this means for Google? Do they try to come out before that, during that or after that? I think they come out in the same window. I think that the fact that we're hearing rumors now, assuming this project sees itself to fruition, and I believe that it probably will. I figure we see something definite by 2020 late. That's my guess. Or here something definite.

I'm not sure the products on shells by then, but it might be. Also, I think this will be iterative. Remember when Steam came out? Did you own a PC when Steam came out? No. Steve was this, Steam was this horrible, crappy, buggy piece of awful software that used up valuable resources on your PC

and you had to install it if you wanted to play. half life two and everybody that owned a PC wanted to play half life two therefore we all put steam on our computers that's how they got us is that wait wait wait steem came out with half life two yeah steam has not been around that long really man I mean I'm obviously not really a big PC gamer but I did get steam for a counter strike source which was from half life two yeah so yeah I guess I did have it half life two was the Trojan horse that steam was unleashed upon the world in and a lot of the success of steam comes from the fact that we have Had to have it on there as long as we wanted to keep playing Half Life 2.

And therefore, while they worked the bugs out, it was all there. And then they're like, huh, there's some pretty cool games on there. Because they were hardly, there was direct to drive, there was Gog. There were lots of other services doing this, but Steam were the ones you had to have. And that's how they got in the door. Gog used a really sneaky strategy. They were good old games for a long time. They were like a retro service during the retro craze.

And they snuck in like, hey, we've got all these licenses for these old PC games. You were love and remember. And then they started just being like, oh, by the way, we also sell a lot of this just steam does. And sometimes we sell it without DRM. You don't have to load our, you know, you can just download it. You don't have to have steam on. And that was how they kind of work their way into the marketplace. Very clever.

Yeah, interesting. So, yeah, Steam snuck in that way. Google, because it's already a part of our lives every day, unlike most people who want to do this, they can literally just force us and they can force us without pain to have this capability on almost any device we use. They used to be like, hey, by the way, here's this thing. It's on your phone now. Want to play 6,000 video games by companies you love? Here they are.

Want to play them with a controller? That's okay. We build their own phones. So guess what? This one's got a controller built in. And not a crappy controller by companies that don't understand gaming, but made by a division that was built to emulate the best of what works in console and handheld gaming industries. That's what I think they're going to do.

We've become so accustomed. to Silicon Valley companies or other, you know, Facebook that are being clueless about why games are actually fun and being blinded by loopbox greed or farmville greed, Zinga syndrome that we forget that

if somebody just did it right, they'd probably own the world if they had that discovery window. And Google has the discovery window and the ability to do it right. So taking a step back for a second, you said earlier that you do think this is going to happen. You do think that Google is answer.

entering the console space. For years, there was rumors of steam itself entering the console race. And then eventually it kind of did with the Steambox? The Steambox! And I feel like that, is it safe to say, didn't work? No, I don't think that worked at all. I think the Steambox was a, the Steambox was a toe dipped in the water that just never came out the way they wanted it to.

And why is that? Is it because the world wasn't ready for cloud-based, like, downloading? games or is just that there was too many options? There were infrastructure problems. There were discovery problems. There were probably internal. I don't have any inside info in this, but I'm guessing there was some disagreement with Valve and what the product ultimately needed to be.

There were pricing concerns built around what it took to run the apps based on a PC architecture. There were operating system licensing questions and how to get the Linux build just right to have low resource but high availability of all the things you want to be able to play. There was trying to balance PC gamers which are obsessed with customization with console. with console gamers that are mostly concerned with accessibility and connectivity to their friends, all those concerns in a company that was mostly traditionally PC-based.

And it just didn't quite come together. A lot of times the people that have the good idea first are not the ones that pull it off. Myspace is my favorite example of this. Remember Myspace? Oh, very well. So this may sound funny to you, but once upon the time, kids, MySpace was Facebook. It was an ubiquitous company that could go nowhere but up. everybody used MySpace.

And then one day, like somebody flitch to switch, no one did. Because Facebook at that time was just easier to use, less cluttered, more accessible, more easy to understand. Less glitter, HTML. Yeah, more feature rich. And it's like the world switched over in three days. It was really bizarre. Do you remember that? Oh, definitely.

Yeah. And so Steam might be the MySpace. or Steambox might have been the MySpace of this. And Google's effort could turn out to be the first. By the way, I do not guarantee they're going to succeed in this. Giant companies entering industries they don't understand can totally, totally screw up. It's happened so many times. But twice it's worked.

One of those companies was called Sony and the other was called Microsoft. Sony was not a games company in 1994. They had a tiny gaming division that made terrible video games. for other hardware. And then suddenly in 1995, they're producing a console that'll become one of the most legendary pieces of gaming hardware in history. Microsoft were the people that made crappy operating systems and bloated office suites. And suddenly, they made the most connected console anyone had ever imagined possible out of nowhere. Google, we think about the way people thought about Microsoft and Sony before they were in gaming. And that's why I don't think this is

Impossible. Five years from now, we might very well think of Google as a gaming company, the way we think of Sony as a gaming company, because it's happened before. So going off of that, I feel like there aren't many companies that even have a chance at being in that conversation, three of which would be Google, Apple and Amazon. Yep. And maybe Facebook. And yeah, and Facebook. So you take, you look at Apple, right? It's been rumored for years that we would see a I play type console. We've made a joke video about it on IG. in a long time ago, but like the idea that Apple wants to enter the gaming space and they've kind of dabbled with it a whole bunch over the years with controllers and things.

Apple has to get over themselves before they could do this. I mean, I don't even know and when I say get over themselves, I mean, I don't think there's a lot of unity. I don't have inside knowledge of this, but looking at the way that they present themselves in the game space as so sometimes dichotemic from what they say

six months before. I think a lot of it as fact is that that company is still in a lot of ways ruled by the shadow of Steve Ghosts or Steve, shadow of Steve Jobs through Tim Cook. Steve Jobs did not care about video games. That's fine. There's nothing wrong without caring about video games. But he created a company culture that actively pivoted away from that part of the marketplace.

When iOS found success in games, they certainly found ways to monetize that. But they've never been serious about creating a platform. outside of their phones that did this. They did the Pippin. They actually made a console. Do you remember the thing? Oh, yeah. We unboxed at IGN with Sam Claybourne back in the day.

No kidding. You unboxed a Pippin? Wow, that's weird. We did the whole unboxing in like a 1980s style with like VHS overlays and he dressed up like, well, like Sam normally dressed. Okay, yeah. I was going to say, Sam doesn't have to change his attire to look like he's coming in 1987. I just don't think they have the cultural consistency and congruence around this to do it.

Like they see there's money there, but I don't think Apple's willing to change as a company enough to make this happen. And I feel like the rumors always were. And if they were to come out with a console, it wouldn't be something that's competing with PlayStation and Xbox. It'd be something that's like, oh, hey, you can play your mobile games on a TV if you wanted to. Yeah. And now with things like Apple TV and there's like so many ways to make that happen anyways that you don't need a dedicated box for that. Then there's Amazon, which, you know, they've, I would have been surprised years ago to see. them making their own products, but over time, we've kind of seen them with Alexa, with

the fire stick and the tablets and all that. Like they are making choices, smart choices, investing in different ways for them to grow. But do you think that video games could be one of those places? It could be. I don't know if Amazon cares. I don't have enough knowledge of that situation. Like if Amazon announced a console type system tomorrow, I would not be shocked. If we'd never heard of it.

It's been in development for four years. And they launch it tomorrow. You can buy third-party games you've heard of right now through the store. And they will work on your PC and they work on your Kindle Fire. And they were, I would totally believe it. Because I think they're almost as well positioned as Google is from this. Maybe even better. What Google controls in infrastructure and information discovery,

Amazon can counter with their storefront and their capitalistic, effectively monopoly on commerce in the United States, which really can give them a huge edge on this. So I could totally see Amazon making the same kind of play. So with all that aside, Google seems to actually be doing this. I think so, yeah. If they do it, what do they need to do to have it succeed? Well, they need to do what no one has done before and have a centralized internal vision for their market. They, they're sorry, a centralized internal division that's built around this market and understands what has worked.

They need to respect the traditions of the rituals of the community. They need to build that core so that they can expand to everyone. You don't start selling games to people who already play games only. That would be a terrible mistake. I mean, mobile proof that if you sell games to people that don't play games, you can vastly increase the number of people who play and thus increase your market. And it's great. But they also, if they want to succeed in making this thing a true platform for what we think of is AAA third party type games, they're going to have to understand us. They're going to have to understand that we care about easy connectivity, brand loyalty, faces that we care about personalities.

We care about our Kojima's and we care about our Pete Hines. And we care about, you know, we have. They need to understand that we care about brands that already exist and be ready to. to support and partner with those brands or acquire them. They need to understand that we need something to play these games on that doesn't feel like a piece of trash in our hands. Now, for some people, that may be the world's greatest force feedback touchscreen, which I think is going to be a reality very soon.

For other people, that's going to mean something like a classic style controller. But they need to understand that what we hold needs to feel familiar and good and have good battery life and not deviate too far. from the language of gaming we already understand. I don't think anybody that's tried this has ever done that. I think that if they're going to succeed, they must do that. They also have to make purchasing painless and quick. They're going to absolutely have to improve their customer service.

Google's weird, we don't exist. Culture, not going to work in the game space, not where people are used to actually getting a response. They can shunt some of that over to, third parties, but if I buy something and it suddenly doesn't work, going to Google forums is not going to be a good option for me. I need a human being that can actually solve the problem and they're going to have to put real effort into customer service.

I think that understanding that we become attached to hardware is going to matter, that we like the ways we play the games and that we want a G-box and a G-box to, you know, or some manner of standard like that that's easily identifiable. That's going to be very important. Do you think that coming out of the gate, they try to take the Xbox 1X approach of we are the most powerful and that's a reason you should come to us? I don't think so. I think what they're going to do is show us games. I think that they understand that we doubt they're going to have the library. I think they come screaming out the door with unimaginable partnerships. Just about what anything that's not first party.

That's the most exciting part of this. What could that, what could that look like? The entire Ubisoft catalog, the entire Activision catalog, the entire weird Atlas catalog and Sega, like little and big. And if they make games and their names aren't Nintendo,

Sony first party and Microsoft first party, it's already there. You come out the door with, and just like a literally, the sizzle reel of every game you've ever heard of. Also, next generation games coming first or exclusively. You know, what if there's, obviously, this is not well thought out, okay, but what if there's Google has enough money to just make Assassin's Creed such and such, the Google exclusive.

They could absolutely do that. You know, they could literally pay for the entire production budget of the game and what Ubi would normally make selling a game like that if they want to just to guarantee that people buy their boxes to play it. They got that kind of cash. Yeah. I don't think you necessarily have to go that extreme, but you could. Is there any chance, and you probably know this way better than I would, is there any chance

that Google already has hired or created an internal team making first party games? I think that acquisition would make more sense and partnerships. would make more sense. But if there's not some kind of studio development effort on their part, if they're leaning into this at some point, I think I'd be shocked. I don't have any idea if they've done it yet. But I think that if they were going to pursue this long term, of course they want control over some studios to produce Google exclusives.

Yeah, you want your exclusives. It's fun. You want a beautiful game that people have to play. Killer apps of any kind. We forget killer apps are not a video game primary term. Oh, he's headed away. Uh-oh, now you're stuck with me. All right.

You can turn the sound out for a minute. No, you forget that killer apps are not a video game exclusive term. We think about that in terms of the game that sells a console, but killer app, a term, was invented to describe computer software you had to have. One of the earliest killer apps was VisiCalc in 1978. That was a spreadsheet for the Apple, too. That's where we really kind of get the term. It was the reason people ran out and bought that computer.

It's like, oh, wow, computers are neat. whoa, I can do something useful for my business with this. And then they went and got it. Word processors, things like that, followed web browsers were a killer app at one point. What's that? You could do your taxes and businesses would buy it. They're like, oh my gosh.

The thing about VisiCalc people forget is it's a time machine. Like spreadsheets are time machines. Before we had them, we didn't realize that. But it used to take days to try to extrapolate numbers out and change and say, hey, what might happen if we tried this? And that took forever. and then suddenly spreadsheets were invented and it took seconds. Once that happened,

the whole universe changed and everything we know about data completely blew up and now we powerful companies can control the world. That was impossible to them. That's actually kind of regret. But anyway, killer apps would be a good thing for Google to have there. Kevin, what do you think? Do you think it's going to happen? No. No? Expound.

I don't think it's going to happen. All right. Well, that's kind of useless right there. I mean, I just, I hope it doesn't happen. because I like having one device where I can do this. I hate that I have multiple devices where it's like, well, I want to play Fortnite. It's like, all right, cool. I guess I can't play it on my PlayStation

because there's all these devices that don't play together. So what about if you're in a universe where Google owns everything and you can play those games on all your devices? All right, now you... I think that's what they want to happen. Yeah, I know, but that's what Disney wants to happen.

I know. Meanwhile, are they going to have 50% equity in Hulu and now Hulu is going to be worth it? I don't know. But like Netflix is still going to be worth it. That's too many things to have, man. I think that's $20 right there. Yeah, we're going to go through a painful.

Well, again, ultimately the goal of something like this is to separate us from our money. I haven't even begun to comment on whether I think that economically this is a good idea. You know, I'm saying I think it will happen. That's the other thing. Like, how much money can they be hoping to make off this stuff? because it's like, I feel like for most companies making consoles, haven't they, like, with the exception of Sony, like haven't consoles come out at a loss for a lot of, like, companies, like Xbox?

Well, you talk about the Razor Blade thing? I mean, just the, hey, we produce this hardware, we sell it at a loss, but you buy four first-party games during the course of the system, so we actually make money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure that I'd be shocked if they're not producing at a loss at the beginning, that whatever hardware they sell. Do you think there's any strategy that sounds crazy,

but could they do kind of what you're saying and have this suite of games but then you have those games that are somehow playable on PlayStation or Xbox? I think they could. Sure, they could partner with the current folks. It depends on whether folks want to play nice with them or not. But again, this could all completely fall apart.

Like, people have tried things like this before. Yeah. And it hasn't worked out. I'm not predicting success or failure yet. I don't know anything about the rumors, you know, that we're hearing right now, really, that could give me any solid footing. Yeah.

Let's push in a little into the prediction territory of looking at the future. Let's say Google does enter the space. Let's say they do it at the same time that the next generation of systems happens. What do you think that generation looks like and what do you think the next generation looks like? Are we talking about across the industry? Yeah. Xbox, Nintendo, Sony and Google. Does anyone leave?

Does anyone partner? Not during that first generation. I think that's the shake-up. I think that that's a period where we determine whether these brands can coexist or whether somebody has to go or whether somebody gets so far ahead that other people just decide they can make more money selling their software properties to Google than they can make doing something else. So this thing launches and nobody buys it. That's one possibility. That's most likely possibility in my opinion. And we've seen it happen with PlayStation and Xbox before.

So like I could be wrong about this, but this to me does not seem like it's going to work. Okay. The thing about this, Tim, what if tomorrow you got an email that said, oh, by the way, Google bought Epic? Yeah. And Fortnite now runs on Google's little thing of Mawesi. And by the way, that's the easiest, quickest way to play it now, everywhere. I mean, would that affect, you'd suddenly be, even if you didn't play it on a Google platform, you'd suddenly be playing a Google game.

That's true. I just feel like as big as that is, it requires 10 of those moments. But I think they can make that happen. They can't, but I don't think they will. Ah, that's the thing is you look at it. Overall, like I'm a fan of Google, I would say. Like, I like their product. Yeah, they do.

And, but it's things like Google Fiber, it's like, you know, they test little bits here. The test little bits there. It's been years trying to like getting to where they need to go. But then you look at with this potential launch, They would need it to be so buttoned up to fight against these other guys that I just can't imagine. Again, we say that. And we say that with good reason because most endeavors in this industry do fail. How many failed consoles are out there.

Oh, yeah, exactly. It comes to mind immediately. The 3DO, geez, I'm not going to go down the list of failed consoles. There's a lot of them. But there aren't too many failed ones recently. Well, that's because people kind of got out of the space and went to mobile where at least there's a person. that there's a ton of money to be made with very little investment. The development went over to software.

And people like, why would I want to dump a bunch of money in a hardware company? It's hard. I used to work for a 911 vendor. We built hardware and software systems for 911 relay stations. And one of the things I learned in that business was nobody ever wanted to talk about hardware. They want to talk about software, especially the money men. They wanted to talk software, software. software because software was paying some engineers and patenting some intellectual property and

off you go. Hardware required maintenance and there were costs involved and what you could never convince these guys was you have to have hardware to run software on. And that does matter, particularly when you're talking about building the infrastructure for a software product that actually works. In the same argument, I think there's been this idea recently that well, there's enough hardware out there, people already in that space owning it, that we can concentrate into selling software on platforms that already exist. I think Google's thrust will be probably a two-pronged attack. They will look at software, which they own the universe on, but they will also point directly to hardware you are already holding as a great place to play their games

and introduce new, cost-effective, appealing hardware that's hard to turn down. And I think they may have their patience to make it work. Interesting times, my friend. This is a fascinating conversation. I had a lot of fun. Thank you very much for it. But I want to turn from serious conversation into a bunch of bullshit.

You invented a game last week called Mobile Game or Bullshit. We're going to do it again right now. This is a remix version. It is Mobile Game or Silicon Valley Startup. That's right. I'm going to play against one, Kevin Coelho. Do you have another five?

I do have another five. they're five prepared yes so we're gonna kind of theme these sometimes so this week all the bullshit is Silicon Valley startups or startups of some kind I didn't actually look up all their addresses but close enough okay now to understand some iOS games Android games are also created by startups so if it happens to be a startup that help fund this game understead so kind of as a game not a startup just thinking okay so we're gonna have some we're gonna have some hair splitters out there maybe around this all right But if it's a game, are you ready, Kevin?

Let's do it, man. Are you ready, Tim? We don't have a jingle for this yet. It's okay. All right. Is it here? Number one, by the way, we have descriptions for each of these now. Okay, good.

You ready? Yeah. I've written some descriptions. Sporkel. Sporkel. Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch and now your iPad into an on-the-go treasure trove of trivia. It's a game, right? Is that a game?

Yeah. Or a startup. So all of these have game descriptions. Are the descriptions all bullshit or all? I'm not going to tell you which are. Are they either bullshit or real? I'm describing all of these is games. Okay.

Okay, okay, okay, okay. Got it. Everything's going to sound like a game. So, Sporkel the game, turn your iPhone or iPad touch and now, or iPod touch, and now your iPad into an on-the-go treasure trove of trivia. I'm going to say it's a game. You're going to say that's a game. I also said it.

Saying it's a game. Do you want the answer now? The answer is? Give us the answer now. The answer is? It's a game. That's right. Hell yeah, Kev.

Some mobile games, Spircle. The quiz game. Number two. Number two. Akmo. The Ninja Rope platformer. Akmo. The Ninja Rope platform.

So the description is the real? You don't know. It's either the real description or something you made up. Yes. All right. Perfect. One more time. What is the name?

Akmo. the Ninja Rope Platformer Startup. Startup for sure. Okmo. O-C-M-O. The Ninja Rope platformer for iOS. What?

It's an actual game? Oh yeah. That's a real game. That's the description. The Ninja Rope Platformer. I could have sworn that that was a company that made like updates for Excel or something. Well, in fact,

Akmo is the Ninja Rope platform. All right. So you've each got one point right now. Yeah. I'm keeping us tally here. Number, yeah, but I want to keep the audience of the date where we are. Number three, NERCs.

NERCs. Fight the future. See, now that sounds like a startup and that sounds like their slogan. How do you spell NERCs? N-U-R-X. Oh, Jesus. I'm going to say that's a startup. Tim, what do you say? Just to make it interesting, I'm going to go game.

You sure? You guys both there? Yeah. NERC's birth control delivered. It's a startup. Oh. Yes. Call it. Gia does that.

Well, there we go. Yeah. So I guess I wing. But to be clear, two to one. It's still two to one. Fight the future was the tagline for the X-Files movie, the first one. It also works for birth control. Oh, that's really good.

Oh, man. Okay. Number four. She is really going to appreciate that one. All right. Number four. Judge. But judge is spelled J-Y-D-G-E.

Build your dystopian police. I don't think I feel like that's a game for sure. I'm going to go start up, bro. That's a fucking startup. So you're saying, judge, you say. Game. You say, I said startup. Build your dystopian police.

for iOS. That's right. How do you know it's a game, Andy? The one time I was on KFGD, it was one of those games out there.

That might not. Yep. Yep. It was on the outs this week last. That's hilarious. It's fairly recent game. Man. Yep.

My mic is on now. My mic wasn't on earlier. What's the score right now? Three to one. Three to one. I'm fucking. All right. Two to one.

You're right. All right. You got it. I didn't say that you also got that point. And I made it clear. It looks like this one's just for honor then because Kevin's already ahead. See, oh, we didn't fuck up. Next time we should save the answers till the end.

Yeah. All right. Final one. Plan grid. Hunt the wumpus. All right. Plan grid is definitely a startup. Yeah.

Definitely a startup. But what the fuck the wampus? That's really good. Plan grid. Hump the wampus. That's a startup. Yeah. That's kind of a game.

Where did you get hump the wampus? Hunt the wampus is actually. the name of a very old video game, which is set in a grid. So it's like, why not? Why not? The sequel album from Chumbo Lumba? PlanGrid is an app or is a startup

that provides software for construction sites to replace their physical blueprints. Well, there you go. So Kevin wins this one. Kevin, well done. Greg won't even close. I'm over two. Tune in again next week for another episode

of Mobile GameRibold Sheds. What's next week's going to be? Next week's theme, I've got it here right now. Hold on. I should open this back up. Next week's theme is, um, uh,

oh, no, I closed it. Sorry. I don't know what next week's game is. You'll have to find out. I haven't, I should have brought that in.

Kind of funny games cast. Listen to gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us this week. This was a really fun episode. I enjoyed it. Let us know in the comments below if you think that Google has any chance of entering the console market and actually doing anything disruptive. Or if it's even real.

This is all based on rumor. Who knows? Until next week. I love you.